Is there enough parking in Pioneer Square?

This post originally appeared on The New Pioneer Square, a blog that shares pictures, news, and events from Seattle’s first neighborhood.

SDOT announced this week that they will be adding 20 on-street parking spaces to Pioneer Square. The parking spaces will be in two locations: on the north side of South Main Street between 1st Avenue South and 2nd Avenue South and on the north side of South Main Street between 4th Avenue South and 5th Avenue South.

Pioneer Square currently has ~700 on-street parking spots, shown in the map below:

SDOT’s press release says that the addition of parking is “in response to a recommendation from the recent Pioneer Square Revitalization Project, a city-community partnership, to free up parking spaces for shopping and visitor use.” When I read that, I went to check the report that came from the city-community partnership because I didn’t remember parking being a part of the conversation.

Sure enough, it says that the City will “Effectively Manage Parking Supply and Demand,” which includes reviewing the quantity and location of on-street parking spaces.

But it begs the question – is there enough parking in Pioneer Square and do we need more?

I did some checking (contacting developers, parking garage owners, and even counting open lot spaces in google earth) and came up with the following map of private parking in Pioneer Square:

Ever since we moved into the neighborhood, I’ve wanted to count and map out the parking, but have been reticent to do the leg work for it. When I finally started to research this, I never thought that we would be close to 6,000 parking spots in our small neighborhood. But is it enough?

There seems to be a perception that parking is hard to come by in Pioneer Square. Peter Aaron, the owner of Elliott Bay Book Co, has stated multiple times that parking was one of the reasons that they had poor sales. Commenters on Pioneer Square articles frequently mention a parking problem.

Pioneer Square has worked to change the misperception of parking, including offering free parking at First Thursday with a Parking for Peanuts program. The new Saturday Market partnered with Diamond Parking to offer free parking to vendors, as well as with the Merrill Place Parking Garage to provide free parking for market volunteers, and shoppers. It seems to be successful, with the parking garage being utilized at every event.

Mayor McGinn’s proposal to increase the parking tax and to add a $20 car tab fee has been controversial, and people are beginning to question if such actions will hurt downtown Seattle and possibly lead to more people and businesses to Bellevue (where, for example, you can find free parking at Bellevue Square and many other businesses).

But if you look at just the Pioneer Square neighborhood, it really is “one of the city’s most accessible neighborhoods.” (link) If you look on the private parking map above, you can see all of the different transit methods individuals can use to get to the neighborhood – Pioneer Square has light rail, the bus tunnel (in the free bus zone), many bus lines, the West Seattle water taxi, ferries, a connection to the waterfront (including the free Waterfront “Streetcar” Bus) and is within biking and walking distance to other downtown neighborhoods. Not to mention that it will soon be services by the First Hill Streetcar.

So I would question those of you who live, work, or visit Pioneer Square – is it that we don’t have enough parking spaces, that people want free (or cheap) parking spaces and can’t find them, or is it that not enough people are utilizing public transit?